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Waffnuffly made this interesting point over on Site Speak. I would be interested to know what the rest of you think.

Waffnuffly wrote:Honestly, I think the Upcoming Maps forum should be closed to replies. Leave discussion and releases in the PiP forum and entries for the site in Upcoming. Entries in Upcoming can easily link to their discussion threads. This also acts as a protection against any possible technical faults that force people to redesign or redo their Upcoming entries without losing their discussion thread material.

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It follows the same logic that posting front page updates in the News forum does. Use dedicated, single-purpose forums for site-integrated functions, and you have less chance of anything screwing up and hosing discussion or otherwise.

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Waffnuffly wrote:It follows the same logic that posting front page updates in the News forum does. Use dedicated, single-purpose forums for site-integrated functions, and you have less chance of anything screwing up and hosing discussion or otherwise.

I don't agree that the News forum should have replies blocked, because I like there to be a "comment" feature available (not all news originates from other threads on these forums).

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Oh, I don't mean the news forum should be closed to comments. I just meant that it is in its own forum instead of being a part of Site Speak or something else; this makes it easier to manage, and it becomes easier to keep track of what goes on the site and what doesn't.

Also, without the Projects forum, where would mappers come to announce a brand new project? Since the Upcoming forum requires mod approval (for good reason; we don't want the site filled with porn spam one day), they wouldn't be able to post new threads.

This is definitely a great idea, though, and I'm glad to see it getting implemented. I do think we should keep it separate, though, as it is now.

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Waffnuffly wrote:Oh, I don't mean the news forum should be closed to comments. I just meant that it is in its own forum instead of being a part of Site Speak or something else; this makes it easier to manage, and it becomes easier to keep track of what goes on the site and what doesn't.

Also, without the Projects forum, where would mappers come to announce a brand new project? Since the Upcoming forum requires mod approval (for good reason; we don't want the site filled with porn spam one day), they wouldn't be able to post new threads.

This is definitely a great idea, though, and I'm glad to see it getting implemented. I do think we should keep it separate, though, as it is now.

I still need go to make an EXU thingy...

I had never intended to close the Projects forum (!). The issue at stake, for me, is only whether replies should be disabled on the specialised Upcoming Maps forum... and the view so far seems to be that they should.

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IMO these Upcoming Map entries also need a "latest news" paragraph. That way, mappers can make more meaningful use of the ability to "bump" their projects up the list. I'll look at adding that to the template.

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just an observation: this current upcoming maps page is a bit ugly. There is no consistancy with the screenshots. You've got this all beefed out professional looking RD entry with screenshots that fit the requirements, and then you've got other entries like WTF2 and TCO which still have distinct forum roots showing through with the thumbnailed screenies.

Would it be possible to enforce a rule that people actually keep their screens consistant with the design template and the rest of the page?

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You could make one large promo image instead, split up unto four 400x300 chunks.

You really don't want the Upcoming Maps page to look ugly, and that's not the place to show screenshots anyway. It's there to catch people's attention and make them click the link to your forum thread where they THEN can see the bigger screenshots.